Maher: Obama ‘the first black president of the racist states of America’

On his Friday program, HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher called President Barack Obama “the first black president of the racist states of America,” while criticizing a line regularly used by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney while on the campaign trail: “If people think there’s something wrong with being successful in America, then they’d better vote for the other guy.”

Romney’s statement, according to Maher, crosses a line.

“You’ve got to say this about Mitt, he’s a master politician,” Maher said. “I just heard him say this the other day — he said this: ‘If people think that there is something wrong with being successful, vote for the other guy.’ First of all, who thinks there is something wrong with being successful?”

Maher called Romney’s statement a straw man argument, but suggested Obama was successful too since he overcame racism to become the first black president of what he called “the racist states of America.”

“Nobody — it’s a typical straw man argument,” he said. “The other question I would like to ask is does he think he is more successful than Barack Obama? Do you? Barack Obama was born of a single mother on food stamps and he became the first black president of the racist states of America. And Mitt Romney is the son of a rich dad and now he’s a rich dad. Who really is more successful?”